I have one of these tanks that's just about to re-enter service, replacing a dying Canon inkjet one twentieth its age. The only reason it left service was because of an ominous "50 Service Error" that kept popping up on the screen.
Now, some months later my friendly neighborhood Linux users' group pointed me to:
And apparently this is a very common problem with LJII/LJIII printers and is due to a failing AC power supply. Makes sense. It's not like this thing has ever seen nice clean UPS power.;-)
Once I scrape up $70, that LJIII will be back and printing...
Have you looked at sneakemail? It generates permanent random mail addresses that forward back to your "real" address. You can configure the name that gets inserted into the name when it forwards (i.e. "Spanish Cypercafe One") as well as the name people see when you reply ("Mr. Fly").
It saves a lot of tedious filling out of Hotmail accounts and attracts a surprisingly small amount of spam. (And you get to find out who spammed you...)
Probably because even though HP is the leading printer manufacturer, they do not have a monopoly. This is actually more common than an industry forming a monopoly. Monopolies form best when there are significant costs associated with leaving one supplier/manufacturer/company and choosing another.
I would argue that it would be exceedingly difficult to have a monopoly on a peripheral like printers. There is no barrier to exit given the modular nature of printing in all major (and most minor) OSes. How hard is it to change printers? Install printer. Install driver. Done.
There are no applications which will cease to work, so there's no need to purchase or install new apps in order to exit from your old printer. The driver install only takes a couple minutes, so the time involved doesn't form a significant barrier to leaving your current printer. Contrast this with changing OS and you'll see why there can easily be a monopoly on an operating system vs. peripherals.
Dave Salch, CTO of 8e6 Technologies, said because of its stealth nature, the P2P software does not show up in reports from many filtering products and the administrator doesn't even know the problem exists and has no way to check it.
Since when is a web proxy P2P software?
The same function as Triangle Boy can easily be duplicated by anyone with a linux box on a permanent Internet connection. Just set up an HTTPS squid proxy.
Clever users will also note that you can tunnel this over just about any port you want. Make this an encrypted tunnel and no filter in the world will detect it. If your school/network allows even a single TCP port out to the Internet you can do this. (Some places allow arbitrary TCP ports to be forwarded via the HTTP proxy. Other places may have a SOCKS or similar proxy available. Those would both work for this in the event all direct connections are blocked.)
I do miss Safeweb. That open proxy was very helpful for casual browsing. The closest non-open substitute I've found is http://www.anonymizer.com.
Re:Yet another example of government screwups...
on
NYTimes Looks at Warez
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
As for the guy who claims his software costs $9,500 but lost out because it was pirated-- make your software not work without authentication with the mothership.
...
Yes this can be defeated, but my experience with warez sites is that they just have CD images, the programs security hasn't been defeated, and people just share license keys-- in this case reporting the key to a central server and the ability to turn it off when it becomes obviously shared is easy.
I think you had the right idea-- software this expensive can/should have special checks to deter hackers. I would argue that for this kind of coin the software company could afford to custom build each copy.
Imagine if you knew that each binary had the name of your company watermaked inside it somewhere. Not the company you enter on the stupd registration screen, but the name of the company they shipped to on their invoices. Heck, throw the ship-to address in there too!
Bury that, encoded, several places inside each binary. Burn it on CD. Ship it.
It's important that the company know that all their binaries are encoded like this. It will "encourage" them to be more judicious about keeping them under control. The flip side, of course, is the software should no longer need some stupid license server associated with it. (The same process could bind a copy to a particular system. Yes, you'd need to build and burn a new copy for each system. Charge accordingly.)
When the image shows up on the Warez board, de-watermark it, call up the company, terminate their license, and start filing suit.
This has some nice advantages:
+ Accountability
+ No "can't run because the license server is dorked up" problems
And a disadvantage mitigated by the already high price tag:
+ distribution costs go up
2-300 years? I bet most Americans couldn't go more than 2 or 3 generations back, maybe 100 years, tops.
The reason is simple: the vast majority of Americans came here to run away from the Old Country. When you're on the run, taking along stacks of family memorabilia isn't exactly a high priority.
You might be surprised how many people think that this kind of thing is not only a high priority, but the top priority. Sure, we're not talking crates of old photos here, but a huge number of people fleeing Eastern Europe in WWII would bring along the family torah/bible/etc. which often had a record of marriages and children scribbled into the front of it.
That sort of thing is pure gold to genealogists.
Why would so many people bring that info? When you're sure you're going to die, suddenly family becomes everything.
No, it's definately a file format-- as much as any other. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is one of the more "flexible" formats out there and supports a huge number of variants. In that way it might be confused with a wrapper for other formats.
You can get the gory details from this PDF describing the TIFF 6.0 standard. The libtiff folks also have lots of information on TIFF, including a link to a proposed standard which allows for JPEG encoding within a TIFF file. As someone else observed, that would be bad for encoding video.
A bunch of non-lossy compressed TIFFs would be great for ensuring readability in 25 years.
Sorry, JPEG is a lossy compression, and, frame to frame, the visible compression artifacts will appear in different places.
You are absolutely right. I knew there was a reason why I always used non-lossy compression for this, but started second-guessing myself. You can see where that got me!
PNG is good, but is not universally supported right now. TIFF with a widely used open-standard lossless compression is probably the safest choice. (I use TIFF/gzip.;-)
Most manufacturers rate their media at 50+ years under normal office conditions, and some of these tests linked above show they are erring on the side of caution.
If you want maximum compatibility nothing is going to beat a huge sequence of still frames stored in a commonly-used format. Almost any of the common Internet standard formats would work. JPEG is probably the best choice for video still frames since it will save you a bunch of storage.
Burn them onto ISO 9660 CD-R media, and you'll have something that stands an excellent chance of being viewable in 30 years.
If you simply *must* use a video format, MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 is probably your best bet. Enough people use MPEG-2 commercially to ensure that the format is not likely to be completely abandoned. You can also find current Open Source decoders for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.
Burn the source code onto your CD-ROMs along with the image stream and you should be in reasonably good shape. Tar/gzip is probably a safe choice, though if you're really concerned, you should burn it onto the CDs untarred and uncompressed.
My biggest gripe with WebTrends is how they try to "dumb it down" so that any bozo who can spell HTML can use it. This in itself is not all bad, but there is absolutely no faciltiy to have it reveal how it arrived at the numbers it did.
You have to have blind faith in the product.
Try feeding WebTrends a custom log that isn't in its predefined types. It will not error out, it will not complain a bit, it just parses the log incorrectly and produces completely meaningless output.
How can you tell this completely meaningless garbage output from a properly parsed logfile?
This report was published over a year ago, examining vulnerabilities that have been well-understood for >6 years. How is this news?
For me, although the problem is very old, anyone without a good understanding of statistical analysis won't understand why some semi-random ISN generators are better than other semi-random ISN generators.
By applying this particular visualization scheme, they help to make it clearer. If you're lucky enough to find one of the mirrors where the images are visible, the difference between Linux 2.2 and IRIX is phenomenal. The "nodes" (areas of high spot density) on the IRIX plot clearly show places where guessing ISNs will be more productive. The Linux 2.2 plot just looks like a big fuzzy cloud, slightly more dense in the center. Some of the other plots show interesting patterns like dense squares-within-a-cloud or a small number of very dense nodes.
Possibly the most interesting part, however, is how something like Cisco IOS looks kind of like Windows 98. They "look" similar even though the statistics given (attack feasibility, etc.) are vastly different.
I think the news is in the visualization methods, not in the problem or the solution. As you noted, those are nothing new.
While the FTC said it doesn't plan to file suit against the search engines, it will send a letter to each calling for "clearer disclosure of the use of paid inclusion, including more conspicuous descriptions of paid inclusion itself."
Somehow this reminds me of Aliens where Frost says: "What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?"
I guess I would have liked to see the FTC at least say "we plan to make this illegal" instead of:
Regulators said there is no determination the search engines broke the law, and it plans no other action.
It might have been better just to add an entry to their HTTP config so that anyone sending a Host: header that was not one of their "accepted" domains gets sent to a "special" error page.
I agree. I woudl go a step further than specs and choose specific model parts for the PC. Plus, it is much harder to ignore some one face to face than over the phone.
This is a good point, and in fact what I meant by "spec". It never hurts to list the brand/model for each component and let a few local shops bid on it. This is especially true for linux boxes where driver support may be different for equivalent "spec" parts from different vendors.
I stopped shopping Pricewatch a while back since under such severe price pressures companies are forced to shave costs however they can. This means they will:
1) Offer no support
2) Send you broken items and charge a 25% "restocking" to return them
3) Not send anything at all and claim loss in shipping
4) Any number of other sleazy tactics
I suggest that you filter anyone you choose to buy from through Reseller Ratings. I rarely have problems when dealing with people high on their list.
As surprising as it might seem, letting that local shop order components for you and assemble it may actually be cheaper than buying the components yourself. The days of 50% markup over cost on PCs are long gone, now it's more like 2-5%. The shops can buy in volume and get better deals than you can. Come up with a spec on your PC and ask some of the local shops for a quote before buying the components yourself.
How does google deal with denial of service attacks, particularly distributed ones?
The rest of us just suck it up with fat network pipes, but a high-profile target like google would be the holy grail of Internet vandals.
Has anyone ever poisoned your DNSes, effectively taking Google down even though the server are up? Successfully inserted bogus WAN routing info into the Internet, again effectively bringing down Google even though the servers are fine?
Slashdot Mirror
I have one of these tanks that's just about to re-enter service, replacing a dying Canon inkjet one twentieth its age. The only reason it left service was because of an ominous "50 Service Error" that kept popping up on the screen.
;-)
Now, some months later my friendly neighborhood Linux users' group pointed me to:
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com
And apparently this is a very common problem with LJII/LJIII printers and is due to a failing AC power supply. Makes sense. It's not like this thing has ever seen nice clean UPS power.
Once I scrape up $70, that LJIII will be back and printing...
Have you looked at sneakemail? It generates permanent random mail addresses that forward back to your "real" address. You can configure the name that gets inserted into the name when it forwards (i.e. "Spanish Cypercafe One") as well as the name people see when you reply ("Mr. Fly").
It saves a lot of tedious filling out of Hotmail accounts and attracts a surprisingly small amount of spam. (And you get to find out who spammed you...)
I would argue that it would be exceedingly difficult to have a monopoly on a peripheral like printers. There is no barrier to exit given the modular nature of printing in all major (and most minor) OSes. How hard is it to change printers? Install printer. Install driver. Done.
There are no applications which will cease to work, so there's no need to purchase or install new apps in order to exit from your old printer. The driver install only takes a couple minutes, so the time involved doesn't form a significant barrier to leaving your current printer. Contrast this with changing OS and you'll see why there can easily be a monopoly on an operating system vs. peripherals.
The first mention of JPEG in the Google archive dates from Jan 1990, but references papers presented in 1988 and 1989.
The same function as Triangle Boy can easily be duplicated by anyone with a linux box on a permanent Internet connection. Just set up an HTTPS squid proxy.
Clever users will also note that you can tunnel this over just about any port you want. Make this an encrypted tunnel and no filter in the world will detect it. If your school/network allows even a single TCP port out to the Internet you can do this. (Some places allow arbitrary TCP ports to be forwarded via the HTTP proxy. Other places may have a SOCKS or similar proxy available. Those would both work for this in the event all direct connections are blocked.)
I do miss Safeweb. That open proxy was very helpful for casual browsing. The closest non-open substitute I've found is http://www.anonymizer.com.
Imagine if you knew that each binary had the name of your company watermaked inside it somewhere. Not the company you enter on the stupd registration screen, but the name of the company they shipped to on their invoices. Heck, throw the ship-to address in there too!
Bury that, encoded, several places inside each binary. Burn it on CD. Ship it.
It's important that the company know that all their binaries are encoded like this. It will "encourage" them to be more judicious about keeping them under control. The flip side, of course, is the software should no longer need some stupid license server associated with it. (The same process could bind a copy to a particular system. Yes, you'd need to build and burn a new copy for each system. Charge accordingly.)
When the image shows up on the Warez board, de-watermark it, call up the company, terminate their license, and start filing suit.
This has some nice advantages:
+ Accountability
+ No "can't run because the license server is dorked up" problems
And a disadvantage mitigated by the already high price tag:
+ distribution costs go up
That sort of thing is pure gold to genealogists.
Why would so many people bring that info? When you're sure you're going to die, suddenly family becomes everything.
Read the original question in-context here.
I'd like to see that cash in escrow before I believed anything this "anonymous" donor said.
Wow. And here I've been building my own depots all this time.
. cgi/cgi/displayProductInfo.pl?productNumber=T1471A A
http://www.software.hp.com/cgi-bin/swdepot_parser
Thanks for the tip, Marx!
Sssh! You'll make it angry!
No, it's definately a file format-- as much as any other. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is one of the more "flexible" formats out there and supports a huge number of variants. In that way it might be confused with a wrapper for other formats.
You can get the gory details from this PDF describing the TIFF 6.0 standard. The libtiff folks also have lots of information on TIFF, including a link to a proposed standard which allows for JPEG encoding within a TIFF file. As someone else observed, that would be bad for encoding video.
A bunch of non-lossy compressed TIFFs would be great for ensuring readability in 25 years.
The old uncompressed Windows WAV format is good, but can easily be confused with the new lossy-compressed format.
So my choice is the ancient Sun
You are absolutely right. I knew there was a reason why I always used non-lossy compression for this, but started second-guessing myself. You can see where that got me!
PNG is good, but is not universally supported right now. TIFF with a widely used open-standard lossless compression is probably the safest choice. (I use TIFF/gzip.
If you keep your disks cool and out of the sun, those CD-Rs should be good for a very long time.
/ TDK.html / Kodak.html
/ Longevity.html
Two copies is always a good idea. Things like rolling chairs, pets/children, spills, careless movers, etc. can all take their toll.
For more info about CD-R longevity try:
http://www.cd-info.com/CDIC/Technology/CD-R/Media
http://www.cd-info.com/CDIC/Technology/CD-R/Media
Or the main page:
http://www.cd-info.com/CDIC/Technology/CD-R/Media
Most manufacturers rate their media at 50+ years under normal office conditions, and some of these tests linked above show they are erring on the side of caution.
Scary, but true. ;-)
If you want maximum compatibility nothing is going to beat a huge sequence of still frames stored in a commonly-used format. Almost any of the common Internet standard formats would work. JPEG is probably the best choice for video still frames since it will save you a bunch of storage.
Burn them onto ISO 9660 CD-R media, and you'll have something that stands an excellent chance of being viewable in 30 years.
If you simply *must* use a video format, MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 is probably your best bet. Enough people use MPEG-2 commercially to ensure that the format is not likely to be completely abandoned. You can also find current Open Source decoders for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.
Burn the source code onto your CD-ROMs along with the image stream and you should be in reasonably good shape. Tar/gzip is probably a safe choice, though if you're really concerned, you should burn it onto the CDs untarred and uncompressed.
My biggest gripe with WebTrends is how they try to "dumb it down" so that any bozo who can spell HTML can use it. This in itself is not all bad, but there is absolutely no faciltiy to have it reveal how it arrived at the numbers it did.
You have to have blind faith in the product.
Try feeding WebTrends a custom log that isn't in its predefined types. It will not error out, it will not complain a bit, it just parses the log incorrectly and produces completely meaningless output.
How can you tell this completely meaningless garbage output from a properly parsed logfile?
You can't.
For me, although the problem is very old, anyone without a good understanding of statistical analysis won't understand why some semi-random ISN generators are better than other semi-random ISN generators.
By applying this particular visualization scheme, they help to make it clearer. If you're lucky enough to find one of the mirrors where the images are visible, the difference between Linux 2.2 and IRIX is phenomenal. The "nodes" (areas of high spot density) on the IRIX plot clearly show places where guessing ISNs will be more productive. The Linux 2.2 plot just looks like a big fuzzy cloud, slightly more dense in the center. Some of the other plots show interesting patterns like dense squares-within-a-cloud or a small number of very dense nodes.
Possibly the most interesting part, however, is how something like Cisco IOS looks kind of like Windows 98. They "look" similar even though the statistics given (attack feasibility, etc.) are vastly different.
I think the news is in the visualization methods, not in the problem or the solution. As you noted, those are nothing new.
I guess I would have liked to see the FTC at least say "we plan to make this illegal" instead of:
It might have been better just to add an entry to their HTTP config so that anyone sending a Host: header that was not one of their "accepted" domains gets sent to a "special" error page.
Probably would have been cheaper, too.
1) Offer no support
2) Send you broken items and charge a 25% "restocking" to return them
3) Not send anything at all and claim loss in shipping
4) Any number of other sleazy tactics
I suggest that you filter anyone you choose to buy from through Reseller Ratings. I rarely have problems when dealing with people high on their list.
As surprising as it might seem, letting that local shop order components for you and assemble it may actually be cheaper than buying the components yourself. The days of 50% markup over cost on PCs are long gone, now it's more like 2-5%. The shops can buy in volume and get better deals than you can. Come up with a spec on your PC and ask some of the local shops for a quote before buying the components yourself.
http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html#9
How does google deal with denial of service attacks, particularly distributed ones?
The rest of us just suck it up with fat network pipes, but a high-profile target like google would be the holy grail of Internet vandals.
Has anyone ever poisoned your DNSes, effectively taking Google down even though the server are up? Successfully inserted bogus WAN routing info into the Internet, again effectively bringing down Google even though the servers are fine?
What's your worst cracker/net vandal story?